


Doldrums

by NekoAisu



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Drinking & Talking, Fluff, Gen, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (2016), Slice of Life, Worldbuilding, Zine: For Hearth and Home (Final Fantasy XV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:08:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21599716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/NekoAisu
Summary: Insomnia is stifling and loud and very,veryimpersonal. It's a good thing Libertus has a little corner all to himself to call home.
Relationships: Crowe Altius & Libertus Ostium, Crowe Altius & Libertus Ostium & Nyx Ulric, Crowe Altius & Nyx Ulric, Libertus Ostium & Nyx Ulric
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Doldrums

**Author's Note:**

> My piece for For Hearth and Home! It was a lovely project to write for and I'm grateful to have been a part of it!

Insomnia is stifling. 

There’s a constant buzz in the streets, cars and busses creaking and honking, the smell of too much exhaust layering over that of trash and piss, the sound of slurs being shouted from street corners and the comparative safety of balconies, of Crowe’s fury manifesting in static electricity raising hairs and smoke leaking from the corners of her mouth─and Libertus is reminded that they are not at home. That army of walking tin-can soldiery and daemons made sure of it with ever bullet they’d loosed on the children of the Storm. 

Libertus remembers Galahd like he does the dosing times for his antidepressants. Every day at five am he takes a pill, echoes of ‘Glaives dying in the line of fire swallowed down with all the ease of a wad of over-chewed gum, and downs half a glass of water. He stares at the pictures taped to the edges of his mirror─Crowe when she’d first put on her uniform, still gangly and mostly untried at age fifteen, beams at him ferociously. Nyx smiles at him in the one below, braids run through with gold thread and carved coeurl-bone beads. He’d been nineteen in that one, two weeks from getting gored by a bandersnatch and pieced back together by the King and Crystal’s damned magic. There are more, both pinned between the frame and the cheap glass pane, but those two are the most important to him─and finishes the rest of his glass. 

The water does not want to stay down. 

He leaves for the Citadel at exactly five fifty-seven a.m., the bus into the inner city running late enough he manages a solid thirteen minutes of Absolute Boredom before hearing the screech of familiar worn-out brakes. The ride into Insomnia proper is long and full of bumper to bumper traffic, but he’s got time. Half the northern unit is back from an assignment in an hour and then it’s a “national” holiday (whatever that’s worth to non-Insomnians). 

Libertus doesn’t worship Bahamut. He has trouble bending at the knee for a king he can see and barely understand, much less some draconic Astral storied to be forged of Eos’s Holy light. For a city supposedly protected by his might, Insomnia being wrapped up in a cellophane Wall of etheric interference seems lackluster. Basic.  _ Boring.  _

The legends of the Old Wall are what keep him fighting, axe biting deep into circuitry and bone alike where he chokes on ash amid the chaos of the battlefield. He knows of those Kings and their might. He looks at them and sees one of the Blessed from Galahd, knows Crowe’s affinity for hellfire stems from a queen who took one of their own as her husband, and is reminded of their might. 

Not of  _ Insomnia’s  _ might. Not of the strength of Kings and Queens of the Crystal. 

But of the tempered sword and shield of Galahd’s people. 

The bus ride passes uneventfully, uniform rolled up in his duffel until he gets to the Kingsglaive Combat Center locker rooms, as the sun rises languidly over the tops of the Wall. The closer he gets to the center of the city, the more things glitter. Libertus scuffs his toes on the buffed marble of the Citadel hallways as if mentally flipping off Bahamut when the Crownsguard stare too long, too sharply, whisper about how he doesn’t deserve his fatigues. He’d like to see them say the same when faced with an MA-X Maniple. 

Being off-duty in Insomnia means listening to Drautos drone on about protecting the people (the ones  _ inside  _ the Wall, mind) in the wee hours of the morning before being dismissed to make a mess of the locker rooms and mess hall in true Galahdnian fashion. They’re not made for austerity, never have been, but they’re all cast from a mold that stamps the word “loyalty” on their hearts all the same. 

They are no Crownsguard, but they’re family. Libertus  _ knows  _ them. He’s always been emapthetic to the point of causing himself trouble, but he’d been trying to beat that out of himself since the Landing. It doesn’t work as well as he tells himself it does. Even when he wants to bury his hatchet in Luche’s smug rat-bastard-looking face, he knows he’d die for him just as he would for Crowe. 

“For hearth and home” is such a peculiar phrase, how it twists in Libertus’s mouth when he repeats it. Nyx doesn’t mind it, says as much when they stomp down the steps and out of the Citadel for an early lunch. “We fight to take back Galahd, some do the same for Tenebrae, and then there are the  _ precious  _ few who do this for tax benefits.” It’s said with a smile made of too many teeth and a laugh loud enough to be startling. “They call me hero now,” he says casually, “ and every time I hear it I know Selena would kick my  _ ass  _ for thinking it makes me memorable.”

Crowe shrugs, hands jammed in her pockets as they walk back to the same bus stop Libertus gets off at every morning, and offers, “Well, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t mind if I did it for her.”

“Oh, come  _ on,”  _ Nyx complains, swapping places with Libertus just to get some distance between his body and Crowe’s rather painful “friendly” punches. They swipe their bus passes and shuffle onboard one pair of heavy boots at a time. They settle down in their usual seats in the back corner and play cards until the roads turn dirtier, the sound of children playing and the flapping of laundry drying on sun-bleached clotheslines replacing the buzz of technology and too many people talking on their phones. They pack up one stop before the end of the line (which is laughable, considering how the refugee district continues on for at  _ least  _ thirty more blocks from that last stop) and head out.

The twisting of side streets is familiar, trash piled on the sidewalk to get picked up the next morning easy obstacles to avoid, and Libertus feels the stress of inner-Insomnia melting away with every step he takes toward the underground. He waves to some of the orphaned children whose parents are the entirety of a street. They call, “Welcome back, Uncle Libertus!” with gap-toothed smiles and manic excitement. Nyx tosses some wrapped candies at them with unerring aim and escapes, pulling Crowe and Libertus along with him before Mamá Leticia comes out and scolds him for giving the kids junk again. 

The stairs leading down into the bowels of their little slice of Insomnia groan like they’re terribly put upon. Libertus is soothed by the sound─years of stomping up and down between creaking metal ladders and the squeaky, too-clean marble of the Citadel granting him an appreciation for the lack of high society’s social posturing present among his people─and doesn’t worry about whether or not it’ll manage to bear his weight. Nyx skips the bottom three altogether and catches the attention of half the area’s regulars with the heavy  _ thump  _ of his boots. 

Libertus huffs, the sound more fond than annoyed, and calls out their usual order with a casual wave. Crowe follows after with her hands shoved into her pockets, sitting down with Nyx and pulling out a faded deck of Galahdian playing cards before dealing and kicking back to wait for Libertus to finish attempting to tune the duct-taped radio they’d given up on fixing a few months back. It crackles to life with the sound of armónico and timbales just as Libertus looks two seconds away from throwing the device over the railing into a trash heap, music filling the air. 

It’s a familiar tune and Libertus can feel his shoulders ease at the sound of it. By the time he sits down in his chair with drinks, it feels like the war (that  _ Insomnia)  _ can’t hurt him so easily as it does when he’s in uniform. He tosses back a shot, picks up his stack of cards, and smiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on:  
> tumblr | kiriami.tumblr.com  
> twitter | @FlamingAceKiri  
> discord (FFXV Haven) | https://discord.gg/QGxvyD3


End file.
